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The Vicar's Wife

by Katharine Swartz

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5824446,355 (3.94)4
Jane Hatton and her British husband Andrew relocate from New York City to a small village on the Cumbrian coast. Jane has been city-based and career-driven but when her fourteen year old daughter Natalie falls in with the wrong crowd at school in Manhattan, she and Andrew decide to try country living. However Jane has trouble getting used to the silence and solitude of a remote village. Natalie hates her new school, and eleven-year-old Ben struggles academically. Only seven-year-old Merrie enjoys country life. Has Jane made a horrible mistake? The Hattons have bought the old vicarage in the village. When Jane finds a scrap of shopping list, she grows curious about Alice, the vicar's wife who lived there years before. As we follow the twin narratives of Jane, in the present, and Alice in the 1930s we discover that both are on a journey to discover their true selves, and to address their deepest fears.… (more)
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The Vicar’s Wife, an upcoming novel by Katherine Swartz, tells two stories, both set in the same vicarage in the rural village of Goswell, but eighty years apart. One story is about Alice, who leaves Cambridge — one of my favorite places in the world, and a time in my life when I was insanely happy — and comes to Goswell when she gets married. The other story is about Jane, who leaves New York City — one of my favorite places in the world, and a time in my life when I was insanely happy — and comes to Goswell with her English husband.

The two stories collide and overlap in surprising ways, as both women struggle with the stifling small village society, and enjoy the rustic charm of the vicarage and the surrounding countryside. Each scene is incredibly realistic, from young bride Alice nervously attempting a cake under the watchful eyes of the vicarage’s formidable housekeeper, to Jane’s visit to the village clothes-swap. I recently heard this type of novel called a “domestic drama”. Not sure if this is terminology everyone else is familiar with (It was new to me!), and it’s a perfectly fitting term for novels about personal relationships and inner lives. The Vicar’s Wife invites readers into deeply personal moments in marriages and friendships, and shows why and how these characters make personal choices.

My full review (mild spoilers) is here. ( )
  TheFictionAddiction | Aug 12, 2020 |
New Yorker Jane and her husband Andrew leave their life in the Big Apple to live in an old vicarage in a village in the Lake District, where Andrew grew up. Jane, born and bred in the Big Apple, doesn't really want to settle in to her new life, and makes little effort to get to know her neighbours. While making some half-heated attempts at redecorating her new home, the old vicarage in Goswell, she discovers a shopping list, and begins wondering about the person who wrote it: who were they? What sort of life did they have in this large, cold house?

Through a parallel story, the reader finds out the answer to those questions: Alice moves from Cambridge to Goswell when she marries Goswell's vicar David, in the 1930s.

The two stories to a large degree mirror each other - the difficulties of coping with major life changes, settling into a new place and the expectations people have. For all the similarities, however, my feelings for each story are entirely different. Alice's story is sympathetically written, portraying very well the emotions of a major upheaval, the sometimes traumatic events that Alice goes through, and her wartime experience. I was, however, less enamoured with Jane as a character. For most of the book, she comes across as selfish and self-centred, until the predictable epiphany towards the end of the book, when suddenly everyone decides everything will be OK. I had no empathy with Jane' character, and as a result, I didn't really care what happened to her. Although I liked Alice's story, I was left cold by Jane's, and doubt therefore that I will read anything else by this author ( )
  TheEllieMo | Jan 18, 2020 |
I liked this a lot. It's the story of a woman moving from the US, where she has a busy life with a job she loves, to Goswell, West Cumbria, to live in old vicarage. Jane is reluctant to leave New York, but tells herself it is her British husband's "turn" to have the life he wants. Nevertheless, she privately resents the change, and makes little attempt to adapt to her new life. The only thing that piques her interest at all is the scrap of paper she finds while exploring the larder, a brief shopping list. She manages to identify the writer of the list tentatively as Alice James, wife of the vicar of Goswell in the 1930s, and thus, a former resident of Jane's new home.

At this point, Alice's story starts in parallel, and the two run side-by-side for the remainder of the book. In many ways, Alice is the real protagonist, although Jane is the one the reader is expected to identify with. But both are depicted with equal sympathy, as is the community of Goswell, clearly based on the author's own experience of living in Cumbria.

It may be purely coincidence that the title echoes that of one of Joanna Trollope's very successful "Aga sagas", though I doubt it, because this is very much in the Trollope tradition. Something Swartz shares with Trollope is the ability to create convincing child characters, and to engage your interest in them. The depiction of the gradual realisation of unhappiness is also very reminiscent of Trollope at her best. Even the cover could be Trollope.

This is not the only time that Swartz has written about Goswell, I've discovered, and I shall be reading more of her books. Thoroughly recommended.

My copy was courtesy of NetGalley. ( )
  GeraniumCat | Jan 11, 2016 |
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
It was an okay read. The Vicar’s Wife didn’t grab my attention, and it was easy to put down to do other things. With that being said, it was a pleasant, interesting read. I did love how it went back and forth from Alice to Jane, and how you could see their lives were much of the same, even from different eras.
Jane did come off stubborn throughout the book, as well as Andrew. There seemed to be total lack of communication, even with them being married. Sure moving can be stressful, and I am sure it brings out the worst in people, but it was like they never had time, or made time for one another when it was needed the most.
I loved Alice throughout the read. She was more rounded, and understood more things, even if she seemed younger than Jane. Alice married David, they fought through losing a child, and much more. I would have loved to read more about Alice and David or Mr. & Mrs. James. ( )
  wjbooks | Jan 2, 2015 |
Two women, one house.

While researching a little of the author's life for this review, I discovered that Katharine Swartz had, herself, spent a few years living in New York. She also moved from there to the north of England and her husband is an Anglican minister. So she must have experienced many of the emotions that her characters struggle with.

Jane Hatton and her family thought they were true New Yorkers until Jane's British husband, Andrew, decided they should move to an isolated village in northern England to get away from the bad crowd their eldest daughter was mixing with. Jane left her high powered job and compact New York apartment to move to a crumbling old dusty vicarage.

It was a difficult move but the three children adapted surprisingly well, leaving only Jane floundering and lost without her American roots. While attempting to redecorate the pantry, she found an old shopping list, which prompted her to see what she could discover about this former resident of the vicarage.

Through flashbacks, we learn of Alice James's move to Goswell as the new young wife of the incumbent vicar, David James, in 1931. She also struggled to settle in the draughty old vicarage and wasn't sure what was expected of her as wife to the much loved vicar.

Through alternating chapters we follow Jane's attempts to integrate within the village and Alice James's life, seventy, or so, years previously, in the build up to WWII.

Unfortunately, the first half of the book irritated me with the endless moaning and complaining on the part of both women, but particularly Jane Hatton, who made very little effort to become part of the village. The words 'guilt' and 'guilty' appeared so often that I started highlighting them on my Kindle. By the time she started to show a little less negativity I was ready to send her back to New York City.
Alice James was slightly better and her story interested me more, but neither women was particularly endearing.

I hadn't realised that the author writes for Mills and Boon under the name Kate Hewitt, and this did explain the style of her writing. For me it lacked depth and substance, and the women were far too miserable and sorry for themselves. ( )
  DubaiReader | Apr 13, 2014 |
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Jane Hatton and her British husband Andrew relocate from New York City to a small village on the Cumbrian coast. Jane has been city-based and career-driven but when her fourteen year old daughter Natalie falls in with the wrong crowd at school in Manhattan, she and Andrew decide to try country living. However Jane has trouble getting used to the silence and solitude of a remote village. Natalie hates her new school, and eleven-year-old Ben struggles academically. Only seven-year-old Merrie enjoys country life. Has Jane made a horrible mistake? The Hattons have bought the old vicarage in the village. When Jane finds a scrap of shopping list, she grows curious about Alice, the vicar's wife who lived there years before. As we follow the twin narratives of Jane, in the present, and Alice in the 1930s we discover that both are on a journey to discover their true selves, and to address their deepest fears.

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